From the man who coined the term net neutrality, comes a warning about
the dangers of excessive corporate and industrial concentration for our
economic and political future.
We live in an age of extreme corporate concentration, in which global
industries are controlled by just a few giant firms--big banks, big
pharma, and big tech, just to name a few. But concern over what Louis
Brandeis called the curse of bigness can no longer remain the province
of specialist lawyers and economists, for it has spilled over into
policy and politics, even threatening democracy itself. History suggests
that tolerance of inequality and failing to control excessive corporate
power may prompt the rise of populism, nationalism, extremist
politicians, and fascist regimes. In short, as Wu warns, we are in grave
danger of repeating the signature errors of the twentieth century.
In The Curse of Bigness, Tim Wu, special assistant to President Biden
for technology and competition policy, explains how figures like
Brandeis and Theodore Roosevelt first confronted the democratic threats
posed by the great trusts of the Gilded Age--but the lessons of the
Progressive Era were forgotten in the last 40 years. He calls for
recovering the lost tenets of the trustbusting age as part of a broader
revival of American progressive ideas as we confront the fallout of
persistent and extreme economic inequality.
